TY - JOUR AU - Lahiri, Partha AU - Pramanik, Santanu PY - 2019/07/25 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Evaluation of Synthetic Small-area Estimators Using Design-based Methods JF - Austrian Journal of Statistics JA - AJS VL - 48 IS - 4 SE - Articles DO - 10.17713/ajs.v48i4.790 UR - https://ajs.or.at/index.php/ajs/article/view/790 SP - 43-57 AB - <p>The use of area-specific design-based mean squared error (MSE) to measure the uncertainty associated with synthetic and direct estimators is appealing since the same model-free criterion is applied. However, the small sample size is often a difficulty in obtaining a reliable estimator of the area-specific design-based MSE. Moreover, the area-specific design-based mean squared error estimator might yield undesirable negative values under certain circumstances. The existing solution to overcome the problem of small sample size is to consider average design-based MSE, average being taken over the available small areas. This may not solve the other problem of negative MSE. An alternative average design-based mean squared error estimator is proposed which always produces positive estimates. Simulation shows that this estimator performs better than the existing average design-based MSEs as it always produces positive estimates and accounts for the bias component usually present in synthetic estimators.</p> ER -